Canada’s first Green member of a provincial legislature has shaken up the B.C. anti-pipeline sector after expressing what appeared to be tacit support for a $25 billion refinery that would be built at the western edge of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.

“I don’t care if people paint me as this, that or the other; I’m trying to derive a sensible discussion in this province beyond ‘no to this’ and ‘no to that,’” said B.C. MLA Andrew Weaver, the first elected representative of the B.C. Green Party.

While noting he would “rather see this stuff [Alberta oil] stay in the ground,” Mr. Weaver told the National Post on Monday that “common sense says that if you have to do it, it’s got to be refined.”

The project in question is Kitimat Clean, a plan by B.C. newspaper publisher David Black to build a giant heavy oil refinery north of Kitimat that would process Alberta crude coming in via rail or pipeline.

In an August editorial for the National Post, Mr. Black noted that if B.C. was able to load up tankers exclusively with refined fuel products, the province could dodge many of the risks associated with shipping bitumen. In the case of a spill, he noted, “refined fuels, while damaging, will float and evaporate.”

In comments last week to B.C. media, Mr. Weaver called the refinery plan a “compromise solution.”

“I truly believe [David Black] put that forward not to make another fortune—he doesn’t need one—but because he’s a B.C. boy who does not want to see heavy oil tankers on our coast either,” he said.

In a detailed 3,500-word online post, Mr. Weaver explained that while he did not specifically endorse the Black project, he saw the proposal as a check on the “sheer recklessness of proposing to load super tankers with impossible-to-clean-up dilbit.”

“While the safest solution for BC would be no new pipelines, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves about what proposals are on the table,” he wrote, noting “the immense economic pressure to transport [Alberta oil] across B.C.”

He also noted that, absent a pipeline, Alberta oil would simply continue to be shipped through B.C. by rail. Citing the rail guarantees in the Canada Transportation Act, Mr. Weaver noted that “frankly, there is little we can do about that.”

In December, the B.C. Green Party specifically called on B.C. to ban “dilbit transport along the British Columbia Coast” before approving any future heavy oil pipeline projects.

In Sunday’s post, Mr. Weaver called on all politicians concerned about coastal oil spills to join him in “in demanding that … heavy oil be kept out of our coastal waters.”

“It just seems like the Green Party is selling out,” Vancouver-area NDP MLA Chandra Herbert told the Georgia Straight last Friday.

“What’s the use of a Green Party that supports bitumen pipelines and oil refineries?” wrote a disaffected supporter in a Twitter exchange with both Mr. Weaver and federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Mr. Weaver rebuked the criticisms in Sunday’s post.

“As … the first Green MLA in North America, and as someone who has spent my life working in the area of climate science, for anyone to suggest that I am ‘pro-oil’ or ‘pro-pipeline’ is frankly ridiculous,” he wrote.